Posted: 3/28/2003 8:18:18 AM EDT
| I am writing a paper that is due at 12:45 and I need some help--particularly with the dates of the bills. Any other help would be apreciated as well. Thanks in advance.[:)] |
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Technically, an assault rifle is a rifle that fires an intermediate powered cartridge and is capable of selective fire—the ability to fire either one round or multiple rounds per trigger pull. This, however, is not the image that most people think of when they hear the term. Many people hear the words “assault rifle” and instantly conjure up images of death and destruction; I know that I had heard the label “assault rifle” a few times throughout my youth and this is what I was programmed to believe. Nevertheless, after growing older and doing a little curious research on the topic, I quickly realized that an assault rifle—just like any other firearm—is an inanimate object, a tool, incapable of causing harm unless in the hands of an operator. The name “assault rifle” was first coined by the Germans during World War 2. In 1942 the Germans successfully built a gun that had characteristics of both a rifle—a firearm that was intended for long range—and a submachine gun—a weapon that was designed for close-range assaults; thus they named it the sturmgewehr, or “assault rifle”. It was first fielded in 1943 on the western front and, since the initial reports were very promising, it entered into full-scale production, with about 500,000 rifles being produced by the end of the war. While it was originally named a sturmgewehr mostly as an act of propaganda, the name stuck, not only this particular rifle, but to a whole future class of weapons that are similar in function. The sale of assault rifles was stopped in 1968 by the passing of a federal law that made it illegal to produce or possess any weapon that was capable of selective fire, without first paying a tax of $200 and being registered with the government through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—or BATF. This bill was passed due to the concern by some government officials that assault rifles posed a serious threat to the well-being and safety of the citizens of the United States of America. Whether those government officials were misinformed about the dangers of assault rifles, or they chose to ignore the data gathered by the FBI that showed assault rifles to be used in less than 1% of all firearm-related crimes—either way, they enacted the first major gun-control bill since the 1934 National Firearms Act, which banned fully automatic weapons. Two more bills have passed since then that have been directed at regulating the importation and the manufacture of “semi-automatic assault rifles”. The bill that passed in 1986 was a ban on their importation from foreign countries, and the 1994 Crime bill banned specific features that were common on assault rifles—detachable magazines, pistol grips, flash hiders, and bayonet lugs. |